Tech Trek

Polar Bare? Time to load up on new Winter Gear

We sometimes wonder how Nordic guys pick up all those arctic beauty queens. They have to balance the clothing requirements of Nanook of the North with the need to look good enough to impress an ice goddess. And we all know it's difficult to bundle up and still muster any flair. If you want to get a girl out of her thermal thong and into your arms, that's exactly what you have to do: Stay warm, look cool. Lucky, then, that winter clothes are borrowing technological tricks from sports gear and fairer-weather friends. New fabrics mean that cold-busting comfort can be packed into fashionable, easy-to-wear styles. This goes for shoes, too--kiss those mukluks and galoshes goodbye. Of course, some additional items--like soft cashmere sweaters and hardy wool tweed pants--are perennial glacier gear. And there's always a place in the cold wind for leather. To test the utility of these frozen fashions, we cruised the treeless expanse of Iceland, an implausible home of fabled beauties--and ice--accompanied by a posse of cold-weather Casanovas with names such as Fjolnir, Oddgeir and Eythor. And we came up with a can't-miss formula that will help you attract snow bunnies faster than Eythor can say, "Who's your dottir?"

Produced by Joe Dolce

Where and how to buy on page 174.